In this video you'll see dead corpses floating on River Ganges, crows having a snack thereof, etc.. This is helpful for your meditation on impermanence of life. Scenes mentioned in the Satipatthana sutta section of Nine Cemetery Contemplations are difficult to come by these days, here you see several of them:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxz7LwEreaE&feature=related

When I was at the Ganges River in Varanasi back in 2010 at around 5.30am on a boat cruise, I wasn't so lucky enough to encounter a floating corpse as I have always heard travellers tell but did watch 3 live riverside cremations in progress...alongside activities of bathing, morning rituals, linen washing and tourist cruises...

This is another resource apt for cemetary reflections but as always proceed with caution...

Just watch faces of death videos, etc. if you're looking for a visceral jolt of mortality. Good occasion to recall the 4 turnings of the mind towards dharma. I see corpses and violent tragedy fairly often as a truck driver, the roads are graveyards.In any case all the worlds a charnel ground, no need to go around looking for corpses, you inhabit one.

The nonexistence of the transcendence of suffering is what the protector of the world has taught as the transcendenceof suffering.Knots tied on spaceare untied by space itself.

May I never be seperated from perfect masters in all lives,and delightfully experiencing the magnificent dharma,completing all qualities of the stages of the pathsmay I quickly attain the state of Vajradhara

Tarpa wrote:Just watch faces of death videos, etc. if you're looking for a visceral jolt of mortality. Good occasion to recall the 4 turnings of the mind towards dharma. I see corpses and violent tragedy fairly often as a truck driver, the roads are graveyards.In any case all the worlds a charnel ground, no need to go around looking for corpses, you inhabit one.

Probably at least a double fatality, at least the drivers of both vehicles. Only takes a second. I don't look anymore, I feel like I'm invading their privacy in a very personal moment for them, dying out there in the middle of nowhere in the night or whatever, in shock, hundreds of strangers gawking at you. I usually say some mani's every time I pass a highway cross or places where I know people have died or passing wrecks, and when passing where animals have been killed, lots and lots of animals. I always wonder what the last thing they were looking at was, could be a beautiful day and one minute they were just driving along looking at the view or the road and having a nice day and the next they were gone, just like that, all up and down the roads, millions of people drive by and never know what happened there. Makes you think, not really morbidness but a definite visceral weirdness, we're out of touch with death like with nature.

Sorry about going off topic, thanks for the cool video link Aemelius, cool slideshow, it would be a trip to visit varanasi.

The nonexistence of the transcendence of suffering is what the protector of the world has taught as the transcendenceof suffering.Knots tied on spaceare untied by space itself.

May I never be seperated from perfect masters in all lives,and delightfully experiencing the magnificent dharma,completing all qualities of the stages of the pathsmay I quickly attain the state of Vajradhara

The parsis, that is zoroastrians, have also practiced skyburial, that is feeding the corpses to the vultures. These places are called Towers of Silence in the zoroastrian faith. In Mumbai India there is a parsi Tower of Silence which in recent years has suffered from the lack of vultures. Many of the dead parsis had been only partly devoured, and the half eaten rotting corpses were lying in heaps in the parsi cemetery of Mumbai. This scandal was in the news briefly in the year 2006. There are some videos in Youtube about a parsi Tower of Silence in Iran, but that has been closed for the deceased by the government and is not functioning anymore, it still retains something of a tangible atmosphere of silence.

Alex Berzin has written in his article about Buddhism in Afghanistan that tibetans traveled through Afghanistan on their way to visiting Persia/Iran. This happened hundreds of years ago, Berzin thinks that the ones who went there were probably Drikung Kagyu. It could very well be that tibetans got the idea and tradition of skyburials from the parsi religion in Iran, which they saw on their visits to Iran/Persia.The claim that they never went to foreign countries is simply untrue.

A Google images search on "Towers of Silence" brings up a lot pictures on the topic (of parsi skyburials).

even while surrounded by so much death you will still look upon impermanence with a layer of permanence.much better to study study study and just quickly realize subtle impermanence....then you can hang around death in order to stabilize your no longer looking upon impermanence with permanence

Aemilius wrote:In this video you'll see dead corpses floating on River Ganges, crows having a snack thereof, etc.. This is helpful for your meditation on impermanence of life. Scenes mentioned in the Satipatthana sutta section of Nine Cemetery Contemplations are difficult to come by these days, here you see several of them:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxz7LwEreaE&feature=related

Indeed. And FWIW, the cemetery contemplations are also taught in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra:

Furthermore, Subhūti, when the bodhisattva, mahāsattva, who is engaged in the practice of perfection of wisdom, has gone to a charnel ground and sees many different kinds of corpses that have been discarded in that charnel ground, abandoned in that place for dead bodies, which have been dead for one, two, three, four, or five days, which are swollen, dark blue, putrid, worm-infested, partially eaten, or dismembered, he should compare his own body with them in the following way: “This body also has the same quality. It is of the same nature, and it has not gone beyond that condition.” O Subhūti, this is how the bodhisattva, mahāsattva, who is engaged in the practice of perfection of wisdom, dwells watching the body in relation to an outer body.

The Nine Cemetery Contemplations that are described in Satipatthana sutta are well known. But there is a Mahayana list of nine cemetery contemplations that are different nine items. The Mahayana Nine Cemetery Contemplations, found in Maha-vyutpatti, translated by Har Dayal in Bodhisattva Doctrine in..., are:

The atoms and molecules that make up your body now, will later make up the bodies of insects, bacteria, fungi, plants, animals and trees.In buddhist terms your body is made of the five elements (earth, water, fire, air and space). The existence of atoms and molecules is implicit in the teaching of five elements.Your body consists of the five elements and it dissolves back into those same elements. This process takes place every day, not just after death. You lose matter form your body back to the elements in the form of your sweat, your outgoing breath, urine, excrement, saliva, snot, earwax, hair, nails, dandruff, etc...

The formation and dissolution of the body is a traditional object of contemplation. It is mentioned for example in the Satipatthana sutta. Formation and disintegration of the body is described with great detail in modern science. This knowledge is very useful for a buddhist meditator.Entomological decomposition of the carcass: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_entomological_decomposition

The buddhist scholar Vasubandhu attacks the atomic theory of Kashmir Vaibhashikas in his writings, and he quotes the Kashmir Vaibhashikas: " We do not say that atoms do not have parts, but we say that atoms nevertheless exist." This is illogical and incoherent for Vasunbandhu, it needs no further comment from him. But acidentally it is the view of modern science about atoms!

In buddhist meditation you think that none of the atoms or elements of your body are You, because you will lose them back to the world around you, and other beings will be made from those very same atoms and elements.

Thanks for your link!I don't see this topic as "morbid", the emphasis is on the fact that it forms a natural bridge to the scientific knowledge about the formation and disintegration of the human form. We don't regard it morbid when plants die and leaves fall every autumn. We know and accept that it belongs to the natural cycle of life. Human life is not different form it.